Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
Unlike others here, I wouldn't banalize Slavic at a level of just a language group - there are people who speak some Slavic language from the day they were born, like certain Gypsies, Armenians, Uyghurs, Kazakhs etc, but that still does not make them Slavs.
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People in this thread who said that Slavs are those who speak Slavic languages meant population groups, ethnicities, nations, larger collectivities. They did not want to say that any individual who learns a Slavic language (for example, a Chinaman living in Slovakia) as a foreign language automatically becomes a Slav.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
What makes us Slavs is something that is inside of us, something that is much older than nations and nation-states - an ethno-psychic constant, it's something that can't be taught, it can't be explained, it can only be felt.
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I personally don't feel any such thing. I feel though some vague feeeling of sympathy whenever I find myself in Prague, Krakow and Sofia or when I meet Czech and Polish tourists in Croatia and become - on the spot - aware of this linguistic affinity which in some cases (maybe?) can engender some deeper affection and/or feeling of community. I say, it can, it could, it is possible, I don't say it is inevitable. The very close linguistic affinity between Croats and Serbs has not prevented conflicts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
It materializes itself in numerous ways - it's the tune that shepherds play under the Carpathian, or in the Dinaric mountains, or by the shore of Volga river, it's the dance of the girls on Ohrid lake, Wisla river, streets of Kiev, it's the same pattern that 2 women sew, one in Novgorod and other one in Niš, it's the symbol cut in the tree in Bulgaria, and the stone at the Baltic coast...
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Are you sure of these folkloristic coincidences? Isn't anything Dinaric more closely related to the palaeo-Balkanic substratum, rather than to the Slavdom?
I don't deny though the possibility and reality of the similarity of some customs, dress or music and that it might have some palaeo-Slavic roots. Because, in order for all these languages to be spread, there had to be some people who spread them and, although that people got mixed with other population groups, it is very highly probably that it left some mark. Besides, similarity of languages makes similarity in music, especially in singing, more probable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
We don't have to be of the same anthropological type to be the same.
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What does this last
same mean? (I must stress that I am light years far from being even the slight fetishist of anthropological types or races)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
Two members of the same nation don't have to be of the same type to feel the same way, why should then it be any different to meta-ethnicity?
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The very concept of meta-ethnicity is problematic in itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
Why should we take that typical shallow materialistic Anglo-Saxon view?
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Yes, why should we? If anything, I am opposed to the vulgar materialism (the American racialism being one of the most notable representatives thereof). It is not solely confined to Anglo-Saxons though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
R1a my arse... Pakis have 40% of population with R1a group, more than all of southern Slavs... does that make them Slavs???
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R1a does not make anyone anything, nor does any other of these indicators. They can be just a tool to understand some events from history, but they do not determine any (meta)-ethnicity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
Slavic is meta-ethnicity,
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Whatever meta-ethnicity means...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
that's only thing that is important, and no thing can change that, no racial theories or genetic researches, no brachycephaly or dolichocephaly, blond or brown hair, Baltic, Siberia or the Balkans, absolutely nothing can change that.
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All the enumerated things cannot change: 1) the definition of any nation or ethnic group (because it is matter of the feeling of mutual belonging and not of any supposedly "objective" criteria); 2) the fact of the linguistic affinity of the Slavic peoples.
It cannot change the meta-ethnicity either, the notion being quite an arbitrary one. So arbitrary that I wonder if anything can either change it, demolish it, or confirm it, for that matter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
Because at the end it's only the heart and soul that matters, and it's Slavic!
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Heart and soul? I guess you metaphorically wanted to say by these two words: feeling of mutual belonging. But does it really exist among Slavic peoples?